How To Help Your Child Succeed Learning To Play The Piano
How Can I Help My Child Excel At Piano Lessons?
When you have your child take piano lessons, it is not the piano lessons alone that will help them become great at the piano. Depending on your child’s age and self-motivation, there are a few things that you as a parent can do to help them keep progressing with their piano lessons.
Helping your Preschooler with their piano practice
If you have a preschooler who is taking piano lessons, you will have no other choice then to remind them that they need to practice and sit with them while they practice their weekly assignments. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to help them, don’t worry, at such a young age the difficulty in the music will be easy for their piano teacher to show you how to help them with their music.
Piano lessons for preschoolers should also not be intense, having a fun and patient learning experience will make it easier for a young child to learn to play the piano.
How long should my preschooler be practicing the piano during the week?
Many parents ask me how long their child should be practicing the piano. When you are talking about a preschooler, their practice times will not be very long. Sitting down with them at least 5 days a week (if you don’t practice during the weekends it’s not the end of the world, or their piano education), and helping them through their assigned pieces a few times would probably only take 15-20 minutes out of the day. Encouraging them to play past that is just fun and helps them become more comfortable with the piano.
How do I help my older child to excel at the piano?
As with young children, the 2 things that you need to excel at the piano is a great music education from an experienced piano teacher and making sure that your child practicing on a consistent basis. If your child doesn’t practice what their piano teacher has asked them to practice, there is no way that they will be able to grow in their musical skills. Not only does it take the knowledge of what you are doing, but it also requires your body to be accustomed to what your mind is asking it to do.
Should I have to remind my child to practice?
The answer to that question is usually a yes. Although there are some children that like to practice on their own without being reminded, most children are children, and you will have to remind your child to practice their piano assignments on a consistent basis. It is also not a bad thing that you have to remind your child to practice the piano, or set aside time out of the day for them to practice. Just like telling your child it’s time to do homework, chores or any other thing that needs to be done. Making sure that your child gets their piano practice in will also help them learn the piano easily and at a more rapid pace.
Finding the best piano teacher for children
Finding the best piano teacher for your child may not be as easy as your first call out there. Finding a highly qualified piano teacher, that has experience teaching different ages, and is patient and fun narrows down the search quite a bit. One of the top things is making sure the piano lessons include theory, technique, sight reading and classical training. Students who are being taught to play the piano by ear only will come to find that they are not advancing as they should be, and are missing the majority of their piano skills.
Having performance opportunities is a huge benefit as well when selecting your piano teacher. Perfecting piano pieces to performance level and being able to show an audience what you have been working on can give kids motivation for learning even more advanced piano music.